Arts and Manners

The importance of Messrs. Rodgers and Hammerstein is second only to that of General Motors, but I am no longer certain that what’s good for Rodgers & Hammerstein is good for the country. Their latest creation, Pipe Dream, was assured of a two-years run on Broadway long before it opened; and who am I to contradict the public which bought more than a million dollars worth of tickets, by mail order, on the mere announcement that Mr. Oscar Hammerstein, II, was about to compose some new lyrics to music Mr. Richard Rodgers intended to write? I’ll tell you who I am. I am one who has seen the show. And, as I said, I am not sure it’s good for the country. For, evidently, a new Rodgers & Hammerstein production concerns the national welfare rather than the arts. The songs the two gentlemen write commit the nation much more profoundly than do congressional resolutions. And it is not so much that these songs constitute, for years to come, the formative material for the “Hit Parade” which, in turn, forms the daydreams and the tastes of America’s well-adjusted majority. More importantly, nature has in recent years developed the disturbing tendency to imitate the art of Rodgers & Hammerstein – social reality, that is to say, follows the more or less imaginative patterns these gentlemen have been setting since Oklahoma! The real Oklahoma was never like the one Hammerstein depicted; but it is now. The South Pacific wouldn’t have recognized itself in the R. & H. mirror; but it has complied since. In short, with the exception of Arthur Godfrey and perhaps the Russian Politburo, no social engineers have ever had so much power over the human soul as the firm of R. & H.

But the faster the ascendance of the two gentlemen to ultimate social impact, the more noticeable their contempt for society – for the perfectly good reason, I hope, that a society which conforms with Mr. Hammerstein’s Broadway is indeed contemptible. In Oklahoma! Mr. Hammerstein writes the very singable tunes; still finds it in his heart to praise the proverbial virtues of the poor but honest American. In South Pacific he was already sufficiently disillusioned to teach a lesson or two on racial equality. In Carousel his disgust with the easy millions he was making drove him to adore the starving thief. I skip the intervening period to get to the point of today’s report – namely, that Mr. Hammerstein has arrived at praising, in Pipe Dream, the virtues and the simple innocence of the bordello.

WS

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William S. Schlamm

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The importance of Messrs. Rodgers and Hammerstein is second only to that of General Motors, but I am no longer certain that what’s good for Rodgers & Hammerstein is good for the country. Their latest creation, Pipe Dream, was assured of a two-years run on Broadway long before it opened; and who am I to contradict the public which bought more than a million dollars worth of tickets, by mail order, on the mere announcement that Mr. Oscar Hammerstein, II, was about to compose some new lyrics to music Mr. Richard Rodgers intended to write? I’ll tell you who I am. I am one who has seen the show. And, as I said, I am not sure it’s good for the country. For, evidently, a new Rodgers & Hammerstein production concerns the national welfare rather than the arts. The songs the two gentlemen write commit the nation much more profoundly than do congressional resolutions. And it is not so much that these songs constitute, for years to come, the formative material for the “Hit Parade” which, in turn, forms the daydreams and the tastes of America’s well-adjusted majority. More importantly, nature has in recent years developed the disturbing tendency to imitate the art of Rodgers & Hammerstein – social reality, that is to say, follows the more or less imaginative patterns these gentlemen have been setting since Oklahoma! The real Oklahoma was never like the one Hammerstein depicted; but it is now. The South Pacific wouldn’t have recognized itself in the R. & H. mirror; but it has complied since. In short, with the exception of Arthur Godfrey and perhaps the Russian Politburo, no social engineers have ever had so much power over the human soul as the firm of R. & H.

But the faster the ascendance of the two gentlemen to ultimate social impact, the more noticeable their contempt for society – for the perfectly good reason, I hope, that a society which conforms with Mr. Hammerstein’s Broadway is indeed contemptible. In Oklahoma! Mr. Hammerstein writes the very singable tunes; still finds it in his heart to praise the proverbial virtues of the poor but honest American. In South Pacific he was already sufficiently disillusioned to teach a lesson or two on racial equality. In Carousel his disgust with the easy millions he was making drove him to adore the starving thief. I skip the intervening period to get to the point of today’s report – namely, that Mr. Hammerstein has arrived at praising, in Pipe Dream, the virtues and the simple innocence of the bordello.